I once called on a U.S. Embassy abroad for assistance.

About a decade ago I was stranded in the Damascus airport, denied entry into Syria. Someone at the American Embassy there helped me find a flight out.

It seemed kind of lame, having members of the Foreign Service book me a flight, but the Syrians were not willing to help. The nice American diplomat even offered to call my mother.

I don’t imagine the U.S. Embassy in Damascus is regularly flooded with calls from American backpackers. But imagine the number of calls from Idaho to the Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City. Their phone has been busy all morning, in fact.

A Mexican Consulate will open in Boise some time this year. If Alaska does not beat us to the punch, it will be the 49th Mexican Consulate in the United States. The consulate will provide services for Mexicans living in Idaho, just as every foreign consulate in the world does for its citizens. And it will be a key point of contact for Idaho officials and businesses trading with our neighbor to the south.

But Idaho’s two Congressmen, Reps. Bill Sali and Mike Simpson have displayed an embarrassing ignorance of both the makeup of Idaho’s populace and of the role of foreign consulates throughout the United States in their response to the news.

Simpson spokesman Nikki Watts told the Idaho Press Tribune [1] in February that the congressman’s first reaction was “Why do we need one?”

With about 50,000 Idahoans born in Mexico [2], the majority of whom retain Mexican citizenship, it should be obvious that the state is ripe for the types of services that foreign consulates offer: renewals of passports and other Mexican documents, advocacy on behalf of Mexican citizens and a link to the mother country for Mexicans abroad.

And with trade between Idaho and Mexico a key state priority, as evidenced by Gov. C. L. “Butch” Otter’s trade mission there this week, a local consulate will offer Idaho entrepreneurs an entrée to Mexican officials here that can only be a boon to business. Otter, when asked last month about the Boise Consulate said [3] that a local consulate can be very helpful for two-way relations between countries, though he declined to take a firm position on it.

Rep. Bill Sali, on the other hand, has taken an aggressive stance against building a Mexican Consulate in Idaho and made it a campaign issue. In a recent guest opinion in the Idaho Statesman [4], Sali argued that Mexican consulates in the U.S. aid and abet illegal immigration by offering health services and identification cards to Mexican citizens.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City offers a list of doctors and hospitals [5], arranged by specialty, that offer services to Americans. Americans abroad who take ill frequently contact their embassy for assistance.
Nathaniel Hoffman is an independent journalist in Boise, Idaho. His online home is PaleoMedia.org.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico also offers special identification cards for people who frequently cross the Mexican border to make the process easier. These are the proper functions of a foreign consulate.

But foreign consulates have an even more important function in their host states, as outlined in the United Nation’s Vienna Convention on Consular Relations [6]: “furthering the development of commercial, economic, cultural and scientific relations between the sending State and the receiving State and otherwise promoting friendly relations between them in accordance with the provisions of the present Convention.”

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico is currently promoting an art show of New York abstract impressionism at a Mexico City art museum.

Perhaps a Mexican Consulate in Boise will help remind our politicians that Mexico is a sovereign nation with which we have normal international relations and not a slogan with which to rally nativist voters. The Mexican Consulate in Boise will make all of the Mexican art, culture, food and music that is already present in the Boise Valley and across the state more prominent.

Maybe Sali and Simpson will stop by for a lesson in hospitality.

Editor’s note: Nathaniel Hoffman's weekly blogs are part of a feature on PoliticsWest called "Diary of a Mad Voter." The group blog, published in partnership with NewWest.Net/Politics [7], is intended to give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the 2008 election year.